Anomalies

In an earlier article on Respawn Zones,
I discussed the Halo: Reach spawn engine model as it was presented to
us by Bungie. However, there are some issues that interfere with the
published model that the forger must understand so that they are not
surprised or confused when they see the spawning behavior appear to
break.

This article will compliment my earlier article discussing Respawn Zones,
to clarify how the Strong Zone can be overcome by several different
factors. The reader may wish to first read the preceding article to
understand the context of this article.

This article will discuss the following topics:

The impact of Stock Pile Drop Zones

Designing for desired Line Of Sight (LOS) behavior

These are unexpected and unintuitive
influencers that were discovered and are further being characterized
that were not originally documented by Bungie. This article presents
what is known thus far, but I am still waiting to hear from Bungie on
some details.

Stock Pile Drop Zone

According to Bungie, the Stock Pile Drop Zone creates an unintended and
unintuitive Strong Zone of 15 units in radius, and approximately 5
units up and 5 units down. Test consistently confirm the radius is 15
units. Additionally, there appears to be no significant decay beyond
the border.

This can serious impact a map's design for objective spawning
strategies. Normally, the forger would cover half the map with a blue
Strong Zone and half with a red Strong Zone, thus defining where the two
teams will respawn during the game. This prevents the two teams from
respawning near the other teams' flag or bomb, or even stock pile drop
zone.

Typically, the forger uses neutral Respawn Points through out the map to
be used by FFA game types and allow the Strong Zones to define where
the two teams will respawn during the game.

But if the Stock Pile Drop Zone is within 15 units of the other team's
neutral Respawn Points, then those Respawn Points can be used by both
teams. This can result in the teams spawning near or right next to the
enemy's Stock Pile Drop Zone. This is as bad as the enemy spawning near
your flag stand.

The second map shown above shows an obstacle in the middle of the map
that the forger believes will permit the drop zones to be closer to the
center (after all, you have to travel around the obstacle). But in fact
the drop zones are now within 15 units of the other team's Respawn
Points, allowing each team to respawn near the other team's drop zone.

For small maps, Stock Pile is a challenging game type to incorporate
into the map for this very reason. One solution is to set all the
Respawn Points in the red Strong Zone to red team assignment if they
fall within 15 units of the blue team's Stock Pile Drop Zone. However,
these Respawn Points cannot be used for FFA game types.

The bottom line is that Stock Pile is problematic for forgers for some maps, with little or no work around available.

Bug Discovered in Stock Pile Game Types

Stock Pile game type appears to activate every Strong Zone on the
map, disregarding their game type labels (e.g., CTF, INFECTION,
FFA_ONLY, etc.). This can have profound affects on Stock Pile game play
on a map that uses Strong Zones beyond the typical red v blue, split the
map down the middle layout.[1] See the details in the Bugs List article.

Too Many Zones Breaks The Strong Zone

There is a bug in the Spawn Engine that
has to do with the case where the forger places too many Weak or Anti
Zones, then places a Strong Zone. In this case the Strong Zone is non
functional. See the details in the Bugs List article.

Essentially, the forger can add a Strong Zone, but the Strong Zone does not work as advertised.

Line Of Sight

Line of Sight was found to be such a strong influence that it actually
was able to overcome the Strong Zone influence in some cases. This is
still being characterized, but a behavior pattern has begun to emerge
that a forger can use to his advantage. I am still waiting to get
additional feedback from Bungie on this anomaly and will provide updates
to this article as necessary.

LOS of most weapons can overcome the Strong Zone by providing more
negative weight on a Respawn Point than the Strong Zone applies positive
weight[2].
That being said, the rest of this section will discuss how to control
which of the two (LOS or Strong Zone) is the dominate influencer.

(update) It has been shown that LOS from any weapon, friendly or enemy, will yield this behavior.

For a given team, if the number of
compatible Respawn Points lying outside the team's Strong Zones are
greater than the number of compatible Respawn Points lying inside the
team's Strong Zones, then LOS becomes the dominate influencer. If those
outside are equal or less in number than those inside, then the Strong
Zone becomes the dominate influencer and cannot be overcome by any
combination of negative influences[3].

The forger can utilize this information to his advantage. For example,
if a forger wishes never to allow LOS to overcome a Strong Zone, and
thus use such a design decision to reinforce the model of a Strong Zone
defining the boundaries of a team's respawn, then the forger will want
to ensure that the red team never sees more compatible Respawn Points
outside the red Strong Zone than inside it. This means that Respawn
Points outside the red Strong Zone can be neutral, but some should be
blue (or other team assignments). Same for blue team.

If the forger wishes to have the affect of being able to overcome the
Strong Zone (this is really for expert forgers to use), then they can
simply add red Respawn Points outside the Respawn Zone. They won't be
used for any other team or FFA, but they will enable this anomaly.

It is recommend that the forger design to enforce the Strong Zone
dominate design. The reason for this recommendation is that Bungie may
fix the anomaly. Any map designed to exploit it would then break.

Finally, let me clarify the point of this discussion. The difference
between LOS overcoming the Strong Zone or not is simply that the former
makes it possible for the spawning player to respawn outside the Strong
Zone, where the latter does not.

Regardless of whether the Strong Zone can be overcome by LOS, if you
have two available Respawn Points within a Strong Zone, and LOS is
trained on only one of them, the other will be used.

The scenario where a player will respawn outside the Strong Zone comes into play only if the LOS can overcome the Strong Zone and all
available Respawn Points within the Strong Zone are overcome by LOS.
(Obstructed Respawn Points are not available Respawn Points.) In this
case, the weight of the Respawn Points within the Strong Zone will be
less than any Respawn Point outside the Strong Zone. And thus, the
player will respawn outside the Strong Zone.

Summary

By understanding these anomalies, the
forger can introduce predictability into their map once again, rather
than succumb to unintended spawning behaviors.

______________________[1] Not yet confirmed a bug by Bungie. I may wait to ask 343 when they come online.

[2] It is still not clear if the Strong Zone is being weakened by the configuration, or if the LOS is being strengthened. All we know at this point is that depending upon the configuration, the two compete for the title of the strongest influencer.

[3] According to Bungie, a Strong Zone cannot be overcome by any combination of negative influences. However, since the discovery that LOS can overcome Strong Zones, the margin no longer appears wide enough for such a confident claim. Now it is questionable if there can exist a combination that can overcome a Strong Zone when the Strong Zone is the dominate influencer, though none has been observed to date.